Kicking and Screaming
by The Brass Clock
Summary: Short short short AU wherein Grima is Hades, and Eowyn is Persephone. I have no excuse and plead insanity to any and all comments on the matter.


**This is a short... ish... thing. Um. I have no excuse? **

**It's Grima and Eowyn as Hades and Persephone. I tried to avoid using their names, but the fact that this is an AU and they are the Gods while still being the same characters... I think it's fairly apparent.**

**As per the 'Rape of Persephone' myth, I've done a LOT of reading on the subject, and I truly believe the 'rape' is something of a mistranslation/misconception. Yes, Hades abducted her, but at the end of the day she OWNED his ass and was a more powerful ruler than he was. I wanted this to be both a sort of slow realization of these two characters, along with keeping to spirit of the myth that this is based off.**

**As for characterization? I am not severely well-versed in the LotR world, I have seen the movies a few times but as far as characterization goes... I hope I didn't butcher them too badly. As well, I do not own them, I'm just messing with them for my own selfish whims.**

**There is also a small graphic... thing this comes with, the link to which you can find on my profile.**

* * *

It didn't happen just out of the blue.

Each instance seeing her is another chip torn away from his composure.

He saw her before the day he broke down, of course he has, he is a god and she is a goddess and it's not as if he's never been on Olympus during some party or council meeting. He has seen her and the flesh of her neck, he has licked his lips and slunk away while her mother kept a tight grip on her arm and dragged her every which way, admiring finery and gushing about who she will be as a virgin goddess.

Chips falling from whatever thing inside him that keeps him from snapping.

He has quietly noticed her distaste at the idea of being forever an innocent. No one else does.

He has seen her and he has hungered, but he has never spoken a word to her because he is the lord of the dead, the master of the underworld, and she is never seen without the overbearing presence of duty and what is expected of her. He may not touch, he may not speak, but that does not mean he may not look... and he looks. He sees her when she looks wistfully at a sword as someone's belt or drifts pale hands across a bow, or bites her lip when she sees a throne being sat on. He sees desire and he sees pent-up energy and he sees urges in her to bolt from court life and fly to freedom.

Shards on the floor of his insides.

He wants to touch, he wants to taste, he wants to... talk. He has watched for a long time and he thinks that maybe she is not what she seems.

But he does nothing.

* * *

For whatever reason, she is always aware of his presense.

She tries not to pay him any mind, he is the worm of the pantheon, the only god that everyone tells her to strictly avoid. Evil. Wicked. Cruel. Loathsome.

Which, for whatever reason, makes her all the more curious to know him.

So whenever he steps foot on Olympus or he is somewhere in her vicinity, somehow she immediately zeroes in on him. Where he is in the room, what he's doing, who he's speaking with. She assumes it must be natural caution, given his reputation, but at the same time she has never felt truly intimidated or unnerved by him. She wants to approach him, to introduce herself, to, for lack of a better phrase, face her apparent fear.

But they keep her on a tight schedule of frivolity and carefully controlled duty, so she never gets her chance.

She tries not to think too much on the subject.

But she always seeks him out in a crowd.

* * *

Ever watchful, one day he finds she is alone, in a field of wildflowers, wearing flowing white and stroking waxy narcissus with hands pale enough to be sister to the petals.

Something sharp strikes his heart, or what little of one there is.

And for a time he goes mad, because she is alone and he will never have this chance again.

He goes mad and he spirits her away and takes her far beneath the earth and locks her in a tower room of his domain.

And perhaps that is the opposite of what he should have done, but he simply doesn't care, even though she is shrieking for him behind the locked door to release her at once. He finds himself laughing that she never once claims to tell her mother or the king, or anyone else of his heinous deed, but firmly informs him that she will cut his throat herself, strike an arrow through his heart with her own hand.

He was right.

She is different.

* * *

Three days she has refused him entry into the tower room that she occupies.

Three days he has opened the door as quietly as possible and requested entry.

Three days he has been declined- fiercely - and instead leaves food on the table by the door.

Three days she has refused to eat.

On the fourth day, he does not open the door, but requests to talk through the black wood.

They talk.

She asks to leave.

He asks her to stay.

She says she will stay, but she will not be forced.

He opens her door and leaves her to herself.

It's in her hands now.

To be true, it always was.

* * *

On the fourth day, she is not in her room.

He finds her in the expansive library, pouring over ancient volumes, history books detailing the wars, including ancient battles of all-powerful chaotic deities, to the skirmishes still fought by their descendents today that are just as powerful, but a bit less manic. He does not approach, but he does watch for a time.

He's watched her for a very long time, and watching her in his domain is a pleasure he did not think he would ever have.

She seems to enjoy the books.

* * *

On the fifth day, she seeks him out and finds him in his throne room, pouring over maps of the world above, scribbling on a piece of parchment what appear to be death tolls and numbers.

She forgets that he is the lord of the dead.

She forgets that each death is accounted for by him, and sent to their eternal rest or torment by him.

She forgets that death both expands his kingdom and leaves him with little time for frivolity.

She wonders if perhaps all the things about him being frigid and terrible, are not quite so accurate.

* * *

On the sixth day, he joins her in the library and tells her that books on war are all well and good, but wouldn't she like to fight herself?

He watches her fingers strain at the idea.

He shows her the armory, and she takes for herself a sword and shield, and the two go to the courtyard where there are training dummies. She's read enough where he's certain she knows what to do with weapons. He's not a fighter himself, but he'll gladly give her the tools and allow her to do with them what she will.

He thinks, maybe, someday he will regret that.

* * *

The first thing she does with a sword in her hand is aim it towards his throat.

"You are never to take me against my will ever again, are we quite clear?"

* * *

The second thing she does with a sword in her hand, after he has graciously agreed to never kidnap her ever again, is shred the training dummies into nothing more than wood pulp. She moves with a natural grace, a sort of god-given talent with a blade and shield. He wonders what she would be like against an actual foe. She has the stances and the movements, and her own flare to it all. This is, perhaps, not the first time she has held a blade.

"You've done this before?"

"... Sometimes. Mother does not approve."

"I should think not."

She gives him a look. "What does that mean?"

"I merely mean to say," he informs, nudging the broken remains of a dummy with hit toe. "that if my child held such aptitude for battle, I would be afraid to give her a weapon."

She smiles at him.

He has agreed to not take her, but he takes that smile and he keeps it close.

* * *

The seventh day is spent reading together, and watching her do battle with a few souls in need of repentance. He gives her gems mined from his kingdom, and she declines them, so instead he gifts her with a silver bladed sword with rubies in the hilt.

In return, she gives him a long stemmed narcissus, immortal by her own will as a goddess.

Their fingers, very briefly, touch.

* * *

She discovers, he is not so evil as she has been lead to believe.

He discovers, she is stronger than he will ever know.

She discovers that he takes his duties as king of the underworld quite seriously.

He discovers that since she has been here, plants have been springing up on solid rock.

She discovers that, despite his chilly demeanor, his wit is some of the sharpest she's seen.

He discovers that her wit is possibly greater than his.

She discovers that his true smiles are very warm.

He discovers that he hasn't smiled this much in eons.

She discovers that the longer she stays here, the brighter the place seems to grow.

He discovers that, if she stays just a few more minutes, she can have everything, even his throne.

* * *

The eighth day, everything unravels.

Hands touch passing a book and suddenly, without warning, it sparks an inferno that, for all his watching and all her pent-up energy, neither expected.

But whatever it is, whatever it was that broke down all means of propriety and sent them reeling doesn't matter, when in the dark and in the heat he hisses that he loves her.

And for whatever reason, she strokes his hair with such a gentle motion that the gods themselves would weep, and she whispers it back.

* * *

Above, things have been in chaos with her disappearance, the lands are in turmoil as her mother takes it out on the people and the world. People are starving, the weather is chaotic, and a raging goddess storms across the land, searching for her lost daughter.

Nymphs and other bystanders tell her that it was the lord of the dead who took her, stole her away while she minded her own business.

Her mother is fury personified, and the world itself is in a rage.

Below, it is calm and dismal as ever, but light is spreading slowly and steadily. Flowers are growing in places where sun never shines, and even the spirits of the dead are looking a bit less depressed at their own demise.

* * *

Two pairs of hands share a pomegranate.

* * *

On the ninth day, the messenger of the gods arrives, and tells her the state of things.

She finds herself most unwilling to leave- but duty, duty demands it.

She also finds that he has disappeared from her side.

* * *

He stands dark and hunched in the throne room, and the brightest thing with him is a long stemmed narcissus.

She enters, and it's brightness is dimmed considerably by her own countenance.

She presses her palm to his jaw, tight as it is, and tells him that she intends to return, seeing as she likes it here. And she will only be gone as long as she must be.

As proof, she presses a tiny red seed into his hand.

"How many?"

"Six."

The kiss is fierce and wild and will have to sustain them for the time they will be apart, he buries his nose in her golden hair and breathes her in, trying to keep her somehow, in some way. She drinks him in, hands splayed on his shoulders and trying to... to something.

She does not want to turn and walk out, but eventually she forces herself to, and for the first time in her life she pays him no mind at all. If she did, she'd turn right around and be there forever.

She wants to be.

He watches her go, stiff-backed and full of duty.

And despite the fact that he does not leave the room, he is surprised to find that... this time around, she is taking him along with her whether she knows it or not. She is dragging him from the darkness, kicking and screaming.

* * *

**And that's all she wrote, folks.**


End file.
